It is customary in motor vehicle body constructions to employ a weatherstrip for sealing around a vehicle body opening which is closed by a hingedly mounted closure panel.
For example, the vehicle body may have a luggage compartment opening defined by a flange structure provided on the body panels. The luggage compartment opening is closed by a deck lid which is mounted on the vehicle body by hinges. A compressible weatherstrip is mounted on the vehicle body. When the deck lid is closed, the deck lid engages with the weatherstrip and compresses a tubular deflection portion of the weatherstrip to provide a water tight seal between the closure panel and the vehicle body.
The aforedescribed weatherstrips are conventionally extruded of a soft elastomeric material and include a mounting portion such as an extruded channel which receives an edge portion of a vehicle body panel to mount tubular deflection portion of the weatherstrip within the opening for engagement by the closure panel. Variation in the dimension of the edge portion of the vehicle body panel and/or variation in the degree to which an assembly operator seats the weatherstrip mounting portion on the body panel edge portion result in a variation in the position at which the weatherstrip is mounted on the vehicle body. In order to assure a water tight seal irrespective of such variation in the mounting position of the weatherstrip, it is well known to design the weatherstrip with a tubular deflection portion which is intentionaly oversized to assure that the deflection portion will be forcibly engaged and compressed by the closure panel when the closure panel is closed.
A disadvantage of oversizing the tubular deflection portion of the weatherstrip to compensate for the mounting variation is that the force necessary to close the closure panel is increased because of the need to compress the additional height intentionally built into the deflection portion of the weather strip. Furthermore, there may be variation from vehicle to vehicle in how much force must be employed to close the closure panel.
The aforedescribed challenge of assuring a water tight seal between a closure panel and vehicle body is further complicated in vehicle bodies where the weatherstrip mounting portion is mounted on a vehicle body panel separate from the body panel which defines the body opening. For example, some vehicles of modern manufacture have an underlying self-supporting body structure upon which plastic panels are mounted to define the outer body surface and the luggage compartment opening therein. The method and application for such a plastic door panel attachment is disclosed in copending patent application Ser. No. 418,200, filed Sept. 15, 1982 by Wieslaw Zaydel and assigned to the assignee of this invention. The plastic panels are mounted on the underlying self-supporting body structure by dimensionally oversized attaching blocks which are machined to a precise height so that each plastic body panel is located for precise meeting with adjacent body panels. The luggage compartment in such a vehicle body is defined by a separate metal or plastic luggage compartment panel which is suitably attached to the self-supporting body structure. The luggage compartment panel has an edge portion which receives the weatherstrip mounting portion to mount the tubular deflection portion of the weatherstrip for engagement by the closure panel so that the weatherstrip effectively prevents intrusion of moisture into the passenger compartment.
Because the mounted location of the plastic body panels and the closure panel will vary with respect to the location of the luggage compartment panel upon which the weatherstrip mounting portion is mounted, it would be desirable to provide a new and improved weatherstrip which would assure a water tight seal irrespective of the location of the mounting portion of the weatherstrip with respect to the closure panel.
More particularly, it would be desirable to provide a weather strip structure which would automatically adjust relative to the closure panel irrespective of a variation in the vertical position of the mounting portion of the weatherstrip so that the deflection portion of the weatherstrip would be consistently poised at a precisely adjusted position providing a consistently reliable magnitude of weatherstrip compression.